


As Certain Dark Things

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [97]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 17:50:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3737971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He and Buffy have had this conversation before, and it never ends well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Certain Dark Things

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same universe as _A Raising In the Sun, Necessary Evils,_ and _A Parliament of Monsters,_ et al. It’s set about two months after “The Indefinite Article,” and though vaguely inspired by recent events in the comics, contains no comics spoilers whatsoever.

It was a terrible idea. But where Buffy's concerned, Angel's always been prone to terrible ideas, so when she says, "Hey, we'll be in Los Angeles for the weekend. Want to get together for coffee?" he hears his mouth blurt out "Sure," before his brain has a chance to scream "No! Terrible idea!" 

So here they are, together in the sweltering July sun, sitting beneath a red-striped umbrella at Café Pinot. The jacaranda trees are in bloom, their graceful branches nodding over the patio, laden with lavender flowers. Buffy's breezy and cool even in the heat, wearing a shady hat and a peach-sherbert sundress which does nothing to hide the gravid swell of her belly. It's the sort of afternoon he dreamed of sharing with her, back when he was still a vampire; a dream that had faded beyond reach by the time he became human. He hasn’t seen her since last November, and she's glowing. The baby's filled her out again, taken last year's sharp corners off, but it's the readiness of her smile, so long in absence, that makes the real difference. 

"You look good," he says, because he can't not say it. 

Buffy places a hand on her stomach and laughs. "Flatterer. I swear, with Bill I didn't even show till I was five months along. Even with Connie and Alex – but getting knocked up at forty is a whole different ball game." She looks down, tender, hopeful, anxious. "It's a girl. We're going to call her Victoria. After the last few years, we need a little victory."

"Amen to that," Angel says, and raises his mug. 

They talk shop, because it's easier. He tells her about Wesley's slow, painful adjustment to resouling, and the damage he did to Wolfram & Hart’s mainframe before they realized their CEO had been compromised. She tells him about her latest collaboration with Captain Ng on the Sunnydale police force, and about Spike getting Bloody Vengeance Inc. back on its feet. The waiter smiles at them, and Angel wonders if he assumes that the child Buffy carries is his. Never mind it's not, never mind it’s not even human. For an instant, the fantasy is so alluring that he misses what she's saying. And when his brain drifts back to earth — "Spike _WHAT?_ "

"Got a soul," she repeats, a little impatient, as if this is the sort of thing which happens to a vampire every day (and to be fair, around Buffy it seems to happen quite a lot.) "A few months ago." At his stunned expression, "Not _his_ soul, obviously. And don't worry, he's not going to come asking to be let into the Souled Vampires clubhouse. It didn't work out, and we had to get rid of it. "

Her tone is light, almost joking, and for a heartbeat he's consumed with fear and rage: Spike's soul was the price of her resurrection, all those years ago, and if someone managed to summon it back from whatever dark powers had claimed it then – well, Buffy wouldn't have been sitting in front of him, digging into her Asian chicken salad. Angel forces himself to calm down. "Who cursed him?"

Buffy gives him a tolerant look. "It wasn't a curse." As if that should be obvious. Her eyes darkened momentarily. "Alex was being a brat, and Spike lost his temper. Luckily I was there to snap him out of it, but Spike..." It's impossible to tell if her look is pride, or sorrow, or both. "He went and got a soul from that Kun Sun Dai wizard over on Santa Monica Boulevard – Melissa Delacour?" She swallows another forkful of salad and shrugs. "But like I say, it didn't work out. He's back to normal now."

"Whatever Spike is now, it's not _normal_ ," Angel grumbles, trying to hide his shock. He backpedals before her frown can fully materialize. "I'm sorry. But how the hell can having a soul not work out?"

"Spike asked for the soul of a good man. Let's just say the one Melly gave him was a little too good." Her mouth twists wryly. "I always thought everything would be so much easier if only Spike had a soul, but as it turned out, not so much."

Angel doesn't disbelieve her, but the idea that any vampire would willingly get a soul, even a second-hand one... oh, sure, for years Spike has been talking big about how he'd take his back if only it weren't spoken for, but to actually do it? "Why?" he asks. "Why did he do that?"

"Because he loves us, Angel." There's unspoken _well DUH_ in the words. 

"But he doesn't," he hears his mouth saying, again before his brain can scream "No! Terrible idea!" He and Buffy have had this conversation ( _fight_ ) before, and it never ends well. But the words are out, and he plows doggedly ahead anyway, because he's _right_ , damn it, and someday he'll make her see it. "He can't. Look, I know you think I'm jealous of him, and fine, maybe I am, a very, very, VERY little bit, but of the three of us, I'm the only one who's lost his soul and gotten it back again for good. I've seen it from both sides, and whatever Spike feels for you and the kids, whatever the hell he thinks it is, I know first-hand that it's not love!"

For a minute there he's glad that he's vulnerable and human, because it means that the fist Buffy's clenching beneath the table will never head towards his jaw. But the woman across the table from him is a long way from the girl who punched first and regretted it later, and the fingers unclench. She looks thoughtful. "You know I love you, right?" 

The words are a blow harder than anything her fists could deliver, and she follows them up with the coup de grace: "And always will. In some little corner of my mind, where I'm always sixteen." She lifts her eyes to his, clear and grey and merciless, silvered over with the ghosts of tears long since shed and gone. "I loved you so much. So hard. Even when you lost your soul. Even when I looked into your eyes and saw nothing of _you_ left there, I still loved you. And I couldn't kill you. Not for weeks, months... I knew people were dying at your hands every night, and I did nothing. Because I loved you." There's an ache in her voice, the kind that comes of late-night pondering on questions with no good answer. She sighs. "Sometimes I think love isn’t _good_ at all. Or bad. It’s just...there, like gravity, or a typhoon. It’s what we do with it that matters."

Angel's not stupid, and he can see where this is going. "But you did kill me," he points out. “Eventually. In your place, Spike wouldn't have. Just like in my place, he would never have left, later on.”

"Probably not. But he'd also have worked his ass off to find a way to break the curse." 

He snorts and downs the last of his coffee – Buffy’s drinking club soda, because baby. “He would. I didn’t come here to argue about Spike, you know. How come every time we get together, we end up talking about him?”

The smile is back, lurking at the corners of her mouth, in the fine lines around her eyes. “He’s just that annoying?” She places both hands flat on the table, the thumb and first three fingers of her right hand overlapping the same on her left. “Just a pinky finger off to each side, things we can feel and they can't. Maybe things they can feel that we can't, too. But mostly?” She holds both hands up, fingers meshed together. “Whatever Spike feels, it's real, and it's strong. And it’s doing the opposite of getting people killed every night. If it’s not love, it’s close enough." She straightens, and her eyes light up. "Speak of the demon..."

Angel looks around, startled to find that the rest of the world still exists. Spike's striding across the patio, ducking between tables from one patch of shade to the next, one wary eye on the sun overhead. He looks a million times better than he did last November, though the ordeal with Wolfram & Hart has left its mark; there's more grey in his hair, deeper lines in his face. The Mohra blood that shocked his dead heart and stirred his dead loins to renewed life twenty years gone isn't without its downsides. "Oi, Slayer!” he calls, cheerful. “Stir your stumps. We've got to pick up the kids from your Dad's place in an hour. Angel," he adds, with a guarded nod. 

Not a challenge, as it once would have been, just a wary acknowledgment. Spike, too, is older and putatively wiser than he once was – something that's never happened to a vampire before. They're not friends. They'll never be friends. But it's just dimly possible that they aren't enemies any longer. "Spike. You actually went and got a soul?"

A flicker of surprise in those blue eyes, as if not being met with a jibe is the most unusual thing that's happened to Spike all day. _I can be mature too,_ Angel thinks, with an inner gloat he's aware is anything but. Spike tilts his head, puzzled, and says, “Yeah.” As if it’s the accepted thing for a vampire in moral crisis to do. As if 'vampire in moral crisis' weren't the world's biggest oxymoron. “Didn’t take, though. Or it took too well. It was a bit of a cock-up all around.”

Spike helps Buffy to her feet, solicitous, and in anyone else, anyone human, Angel would have no problem identifying the look in his eyes. It’s just... he knows better. You can’t love without a soul. 

He’s got to admit, though, as the two of them walk away, arm in arm through the dappled shade of the jacarandas, that Spike manages a _damned_ good imitation.

 

_End._


End file.
